Albert H. Willis (1911-1993)
This was adapted from a letter I wrote for Wolfe Glick, my niece Heather’s son and a video presentation I created for some Yale friends from Scroll and Key (aka “CSP”).
Let’s start with the video.
BTW, that ended with me choking up and admitting how much I loved the man.
Now, here is the bio I wrote for Wolfe:
Albert Harrison Willis (“Al” as an adult and “Bud” as a boy) was born on July 5, 1911, the second of two children, to Luther George Willis and Sarah Harrison Willis, both of whom were Massachusetts Yankees, born in the 19th century of stock that was so “American” that its English, Scottish and other roots were invisible and unknown to Al.
I have genealogical info, if you are interested, that dates the original Willis immigration into America to 1637 in what is now Taunton, Massachusetts, about 15 miles southwest of Boston.
The early influences on Albert were high Victorian: education was important, with Luther’s being a “masters degree” level scientist — a relatively rare thing in those days. Luther worked for the US Department of Agriculture and was one of the scientists who discovered the cause of the “red tide.”
Victorian “good manners” were considered important, and their importance was amplified after the family’s relocation to North Carolina, with all its Southern proprieties. Al was raised to respect these influences, and he did; but there was a rebelliousness and earthiness that always was just below the polish. He was a man who was more comfortable being a rough and ready man’s man than being an effete “gentleman” — although he fancied himself, and wanted to be known as, a gentleman, too.
It seemed to me that Al wanted to be both the proper gentleman and the man’s man: He was proud of being a Naval officer … of “being a gentleman by Act of Congress” — where invitations to official events were addressed gallantly to “Officers and their ladies … and enlisted men and their wives.” At the same time, he was proud of going through a gauntlet in the Army, and later in the Navy, where “the sergeant was the guy who could whip everyone else’s ass.” And he was the sergeant.
Let me now foreshadow the theme of my remarks, that Al was a warrior. His wife (my mom) has a different view … that “behind the gruff exterior, there is a heart of gold.” And while I don’t deny that he had a heart and a very good one at that, his “exterior” was annealed by his times and his will to the point that I can confidently say that he was one tough son of bitch, through and through. In fact, his only vulnerability or “soft side” was that shown to his wife, whom he doted upon. Back to “warrior” in a minute.
Let me pick up at his boyhood. He didn’t talk about his boyhood very much, even when I asked him about it on a videotaped interview I made in 1984. He was born just outside State College, Pennsylvania in the town of Bellefonte, PA. His dad was a graduate student and instructor at Penn State. I don’t know much about those times or how or why they moved on.
My next recalled piece of information was when Al lived as a child in Puerto Rico, in a town on the west coast called Mayaguez. His dad (Luther) was on assignment there, doing some study for the Department of Agriculture, and they were there for several years, I believe. The stories from that time reveal a happy-go-lucky childhood — running barefoot in the village, owning a goat and a monkey, and playing with his Spanish friends.
My sense was that he moved to Puerto Rico in second or third grade and stayed there through sixth, being tutored by his mom, using “correspondence school” texts.
When he was in sixth or seventh grade, he was sent off to The Tilden School, in Tilden, NH, as a boarding student, because his parents wanted to ensure an adequate education. I think he spent two years there, until his family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where Al went to high school.
Al had a friend in high school named Reuben. They joined the equivalent of the National Guard and were very, very good marksmen (the technical name for someone who can shoot a rifle very accurately). They hung around a lot, went hunting and were good friends.
One summer, as part of a national shooting contest, they had to go from Raleigh, NC to Camp Perry, OH (near Toledo), which they did at about age 16-17 … in about 1927. They hitchhiked from NC to OH. Al had a cute story about getting a ride into Rocky River, OH (a suburb of Cleveland) after about 2 days on the road without food, and hiring a room for himself and Reuben in a local rooming house. The “three, old, spinster sisters … who were probably around 40” fed the boys and were amazed at how much they ate. It was a pretty adventurous trip for two young men.
Al was an avid outdoorsman. He did not tell me any stories about his teenaged years other than that he enjoyed outdoorsy activities, especially hunting and fishing. I don’t recall him talking too much about camping, and he wasn’t himself involved in Boy Scouts, which was how I got my outdoors experience.
He seemed to vicariously enjoy my Boy Scout experiences … one of the times when he seemed to resonate with my life as something other than a parent. He fully supported my Boy Scouting campouts, canoe trips, hikes and so forth, although he never really joined us. But when we went on family vacations that included camping or boating, he seemed to really enjoy himself.
Whereas he always maintained a “control mode” oversight on all family trips to make sure the essentials were taken care of, he would actually partake in an activity if it included boating, fishing, or doing something macho/manly like splitting wood, riding a hydroplane (at Elizabeth City), shooting some Canadian rapids (at Atwood Island Camp), flying a sailplane, etc.
In 1928, Al went off to NC State University and took engineering courses. He either “changed majors” or didn’t do well on a couple of courses, so it took him 5 years to graduate. During this time, which was the beginning of the Depression you’ll recall, he did whatever it took to make ends meet, and after graduating, he did some “subsistence fishing” on Ocracoke Island, NC, living under a small boat, before starting in a factory in the Fall of 1933 as a textile engineer. We’ll return to Ocracoke later in our story.
I’m a little fuzzy about how he started in the Army … whether it was an extension of a program he joined in college or whether he joined later … but in about a year after graduating from college, he was in the Army, where he was for a year or two. He didn’t talk too much about Army days other than the bit about the sergeant being the toughest guy in the platoon.
In the mid-30s, he got an opportunity to join a program called the “NavCads” … short for Naval Cadets, I think … that brought a number of promising young men to Pensacola, FL for aviation training. It was a great job in the Depression, and the Navy was very demanding. The training was almost a year, and less than 10% of the people beginning the program finished the program. At the end of the program he was commissioned as an officer
In 1938, the 27-year old Al met a young, 21-year-old schoolteacher from Orlando, Catherine Craney, called by all her friends “Kitty”. She was very pretty – she had won the Miss Florida competition in 1936. She missed going to the Miss America pageant that year because she had to go back to school (Florida State) early, but I believe she would have won that title had she gone. You see, Kitty and Al got married; she was my mother.
Between 1938 and 1939, Al’s ship was relocated to Long Beach, CA as its new home port, and it “cruised” all the way around Cape Horn at the tip of South America to get there. Al and Kitty kept up a correspondence, interrupted by periods when Al’s ship was “at sea” and mail could not be delivered.
In the summer of 1939, on Kitty’s summer vacation from school, she arranged to “travel around the country.” First, she travelled north to Philadelphia to visit her extended Irish family – lots of cousins and aunts on her side of the family. Then she took a train out to San Francisco to visit a friend of her mother’s and see the sites there. Then to Los Angeles, to visit another family friend – this being more of a pretext, if you ask me, because, when she and Al met in Long Beach (which is very near Los Angeles), it took them very little time to decide to cash in Kitty’s return train ticket, telegraph their parents that they were getting married and find a preacher!
I still find it amazing that Mr. Proper Yankee (Al) and my ladylike mother eloped!
Al’s mother basically disconnected from the young couple at that point. She did not like the fact that this was a “mixed marriage” – that is, Protestant and Catholic. In her view, marrying a Catholic was an embarrassment.
Al defended his new bride and basically had little to do with his mother thereafter. (For example, I can only remember visiting them two times … and we lived only 4 or 5 hours away from where they lived.)
Kitty was an observant Catholic, but never pressed Al to convert or go to church. He didn’t attend any church, saying “Nature is my church” and preferring to be outdoors … on the water, doing woodworking or gardening … that sort of thing.
The Young Couple Make A Home On Oahu, 1940
Within 3 months of getting married, Al was ordered to report for duty at Pearl Harbor. He and Kitty moved to Honolulu in January 1940, just before World War II started.
Al bought a fancy new, 8mm color Kodak film camera and shot film clips of Kitty learning to surf, him flying around Hawaii, his neighbors, the beach and so on. It’s pretty primitive … all in color. I converted it to VHS tape if you are interested.
In early 1941, the US was preparing for war and Al was ordered to go to Miami and train young men to become Navy pilots. Because he had been in the military for over 6 years at that point, he was pretty senior, so he soon became a supervisor of other pilot trainers, too. Ultimately, he was responsible for training over 2,000 pilots in that 18-month assignment. He told me that fact when he was teaching me to drive … and insisted that I learn to drive EXACTLY as he instructed me to do!
A few months after Pearl Harbor was bombed, Al was ordered to join a squadron of aircraft assigned to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. He was with the Cowpens for a while and the Enterprise for a while, again as a senior-level unit commander.
Like many World War II veterans, he didn’t talk much about the war … only occasionally falling silent when he’d say something like, “I was the flight operations officer, and I remember that a lot of the planes that took off that day never returned.”
He got a short leave to come home after a year (September, 1943). Kitty had moved in with her Mother in Orlando while Al was away. Then he went back to the Pacific to fight the Japanese again.
Your DeeDee and her twin sister Donna were born the next year, in April. They were both very premature and needed to be in an incubator, with oxygen. After only a few days, Donna died.
Diane was almost two before she met her father.
Al and his young family were transferred to Alameda, CA, which is a station on an island in the San Francisco Bay. That’s where I was born, in 1947.
What followed for Al was the last half of a Navy career that was 30 years long … now with the family he wanted and enjoyed. I can see that now … he was a warrior by trade, a guy toughened up by the Depression and the War, a man’s man, an outdoorsman – but he was deeply devoted to Kitty, and he loved us kids beyond question. More on that in a moment.
His career was a successful one — a sequence of increasing responsibilities, advancement and authority, ending in 1962 as Chief of Staff of the Third Naval District, in New York. The Third Naval District was charged with Naval operations in the North Atlantic, and he supervised all the administrative support functions for that command.
Navy life was a sequence of 18-month assignments, often involving a move. Sometimes, when training was involved, you’d move every six months … as happened when I was in 2nd grade and we moved twice during that year. Toward the end of his career, Al arranged for his last three duty stations to be NYC, then Willow Grove (near Philly), then back to NYC … so we were able to stay in the same NJ town from my 6th grade to the end of high school. That was a real gift, not having to move during high school.
That involved a sacrifice on his part … commuting from Northern New Jersey to Willow Grove … 60 miles each way … so that Diane and I would not be disrupted during high school. Kitty made sure we appreciated what he was doing. But the sacriice had to have come from him originally. Like I said, he was a family man and cared about us kids.
The actual “sequence of increasing responsibilities” is as follows: In the late 40’s Al went to Newport RI to the Naval War College … where advanced strategy and leadership skills were taught. Then he went to Pensacola, Florida, to learn about anti-submarine warfare and other flight training. Then, in the early 50’s, we (I began to become aware during this time), were stationed at Chincoteague, VA, out on the Delmarva peninsula about 80 miles south of where DeeDee now lives, just over the Maryland state line. (The Naval Air Station there has since become a NASA facility called Wallops Island if you care.)
Al’s first command there was as the leader of a helicopter squadron (HS-3). He told me later in his life that this was the job in the Navy that he most appreciated and liked. He was a “Commander” by this point in his career … about 20 years in … and he had about 20 junior officers and maybe 80 men under his direct command. It was a large, operational role – he had to work THROUGH other people, but he still was close enough to the action that he could see the problems … and he could see the impact of his decisions as they addressed and fixed the problems. He was the undisputed boss – all tactics below him, all politics and strategic decisions above him. And in the early 1950s, America was emerging as the dominant force in the world, engaged, though, in the Cold War with the USSR (now Russia). It was a bit of a scary time – the nuclear bomb was quite scary – but the US military was riding high in both public esteem and overall hegemony.
I think, now, that the helicopters were part of a protective shield along the East Coast, making sure “enemy” submarines did not threaten the harbors or the shipping lanes. I know that helicopter “patrols” went out for many miles over the Atlantic, turned 90 degrees, flew parallel to the coast and then returned.
But mostly, my memory of the man revolved around his role in our family, not his role in the Navy.
He loved to work with wood and “putter around” in a trailer that he converted into a workroom and kept out back. This became a feature of our home environment for every venue he inhabited from that point (and probably before) until he died – namely, having a private place to “work” that was unshared with the rest of the family.
I have fuzzy memories of the “trailer” that he had in Chincoteague; I think it was like 12’ long and 6’ wide … and loaded with woodworking tools and work benches around the periphery and at the end away from the door. I remember a stool he’d place in an open area; he’d instruct me to “park your ass on that stool, boy” and he’d use clippers with plastic “feet” of various depths to give me a military buzz cut for my haircuts. I didn’t see a barber until I was well into middle school, when I wanted a cool haircut, a “flat-top.”
Young Family, 1951 – Chincoteague, VA
In the late 60’s, post-Beatles and in full-throated Vietnam War resistance, my hair grew down past my collar, which drove him into a deep, suppressed rage that he couldn’t figure out how to release. Those were tough times between him and me, but that’s not his story so much as mine. Back to his:
Having successfully commanded a large squadron of helicopters, he was ready for more. We moved to Weeksville, North Carolina – which is quite near Elizabeth City NC (which is just south of Norfolk). There was a very small Navy base there – a place where blimps were stationed. He had two assignments there, the later one of which was Commanding Officer of the whole station. I’m not sure how many people were involved, but it had to be several hundred, maybe a thousand or so. What I remember most was the CO’s house … a large structure, right on the Pasquotank River, complete with servants supplied by the Navy. In “civilian” society, this would be a million dollar house (multi-millions if nearer an important metro area) and a luxurious lifestyle.
Here he decided to build a big boat. He knew he didn’t have the tools or capability to build the hull, so he had the hull built and the engines mounted professionally … but NOTHING ELSE. He then decided to build out the interior spaces, the “below decks” items like the galley, the bunks, the head, a closet/pantry and a cool eating area that looked like a booth in a dinette, except the table could be dropped down between the two benches and converted into a double bed.
After a year or so of doing this every day after regular work (which was 8a to 4p daily) and working most weekends, the “Brigiditta” was ready: She was 39’ 6”, which kept her under the threshold for some burdensome Coast Guard regulations, and she had two 250-hp diesel engines. That boat was really, really fast … so fast that Al could ski off the back! (He regularly would lure other “yachts” into “friendly races” only to “show ‘em nothing by my tailfeathers.”
Did I mention that he was competitive and liked to win? Oh, yea. I said he was a warrior. Well, just consider this sort of competition the civilian sublimation of that warrior spirit.
One July, probably around 1957, we took a two-week vacation on the Brigiditta, pulling out from the dock near our house (pictured), motoring down the Pasquotank River to the Pamlico Sound and making our way out to Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The only way to get to Ocracoke was and is by boat, as it was beyond Cape Hattaras, where the road ended.
You could dial anyone on Ocracoke island with a three digit number – this was before Area Codes, too. They only recently had dropped having a local operator connect calls and party lines.
Al had not been back to Ocracoke since summer of 1933, when he and Ruben went out there after graduating from college and not finding any work during the Depression. They were “subsistence fishermen” and would trade work for food. By the end of that summer, they had tired of that way of living and came back to Raleigh to try to find SOMETHING … which they eventually were able to do.
Anyway, our visit to Ocracoke was a bit of a homecoming for him. We went to the beach. We went to the square dance at the Firehouse on Friday night. Not a restaurant or club called The Firehouse, mind you – the actual firehouse where the volunteer fire department went to get the engines to respond to fires on the island and where, on Friday nights, they’d pull the two engines out far enough to create space for 8 or so “squares” for a square dance.
Always the teacher, Al pulled me, then 10, aside, and warned me to “stay away from these local girls … unless you want to get into a fight.” It made an impression on young Wayne, that’s for sure!
Weeksville, NC was a base in decline. The blimps stationed there were well past their prime. The Cold War was more about ICBMs than blimps. And the last assignment Al had was to prepare the base to be decommissioned and shut down. He then was assigned to an aircraft carrier for about 6 months. Mom, Diane and I lived in a small rental unit in Elizabeth City while dad was away … the only long extended absence I can remember.
By 1958 or so, Al had only 4-5 years left to get to his 30-year pension. There was some possibility that he’d be promoted from his “Captain” status to Admiral, but he was “passed over” for that promotion. Looking at it from my vantage point now, I can see why. He was guileless … the antithesis of “political.” He didn’t go out of his way to make a controversial point (as Diane sometimes does when she channels dad), but he definitely didn’t back down or pull any punches, either.
Kitty could have gone further … she had the social skills to support him a step or maybe two beyond where he stopped.
It wasn’t a point of contention between them. They were happy with his career and their life together.
After a short, several-month assignment at The Pentagon (reviewing junior officers for promotion), he was assigned to New York.
Knowing only headlines of crime and violence in New York, my mother cried at the news. But Al told her not to worry … he’d find “suitable quarters for the family.” He found a place in Madison, NJ, an hour and 20 minute commute west of his office, which was near Wall Street. He contracted for a wonderful, split level home in a new development at the edge of town, again having the contractor deliver the basics and leaving the basement, the garage, the walk up attic and the entire back yard unfinished.
He built a shop along one wall of the garage and proceeded to build two bedrooms and an office in the attic area. He also laid tile, painted and added electrical fixtures and lights to make a “rec room” in the basement.
He bought a Hammond Organ and took lessons … but never really was able to play. He bought a “stereo” for that basement and ran wires up to the living room so Mom could “entertain.”
He landscaped the entire back yard, built a greenhouse with concrete sides, a glass roof on top and a pot bellied stove inside. He groomed a small grove of trees (20’ x 20’) which he had persuaded the developer to leave alone, into a wonderful picnic area. And he created a garden that was the envy of the neighborhood. He did all this while commuting 3 hours a day to NYC and later to Willow Grove, PA.
In some ways, that was the high point. He “retired” at 53 with a full pension and full competencies. Although he was disappointed that corporate America didn’t snap him up and give him a good job, he was able to do some interesting things – helping your Grandpa Rich’s father, Emil McConnell, with some drilling projects that Emil’s company was doing. (They included the foundation to the World Trade Center and a pumped-storage dam at a nuclear power plan up the Hudson River a couple hours north of NYC.)
He looked into running an Apache trailer franchise, did some stock market investing and kept mentally fresh and busy, but he was essentially retired from then until he died at age 80.
He wasn’t particularly social … although he wasn’t anti-social either. He didn’t come to many of my high school activities unless Kitty insisted. He didn’t go to church with my Mom. He did enjoy the occasional trip to Sussex County NJ to go hunting for “varmits” (rabbits, weasels, fox, etc.) while walking across frozen fields in the winter. He did serve as an “advisor” to my Explorer Post … but only because the Post would have folded without another adult to supervise our activities.
During the 60’s he also built some boats from scratch – a 22’ ketch with a lead keel that he poured himself (after melting the lead over a big propane fire), and companion dory, pictured below.
I think this was 1966, early September. I had just returned from Europe and we only had a few days together before I had to go back for my sophomore year in college.
They had a friend who had a house on Orient Point … at the far reaches of eastern Long Island. We went out there, sleeping late, listening to the waves and the gulls and enjoying some lazy seaside living after the summer vacationers had left.
As you can see, both so far, and in the picture on the next page, Al really loved Kitty. He was devoted to her. He was the Captain … but she was actually the boss, if truth be told.
For every summer I could ever remember, we spent time at the seashore. Mom loved it. Dad was not a beach person, being very fair skinned and all, but as part of his devotion to Kitty, he always made time for her to go to the beach each summer. And when they retired, he moved with her to Normandy Beach, NJ, just 3 blocks from the beach, where they lived year-round.
In the late 60s, we used to converge on Diane and Rich’s house for most major holidays. Here’s a good picture taken at Christmas in about 1968.
Al liked being a grandfather, although he had difficulty letting go of the role of disciplinarian, e.g., thinking that sometimes he had to be the one to “teach” Tim or Heather something.
Heather was really smart; she figured out early how to manage Al. Tim was less skilled and sometimes got on the wrong side of Al. Having been a leader of young men (most Navy sailors being 19 – 24 years old), the “Old Man” was kind of a gruff taskmaster when it came to young males.
In 1969, an “old shipmate of [Al’s], Bob Beebe” sold a 55’ oceangoing yacht of his to an IBM executive from Connecticut, Bob Sutton. Mr. and Mrs. Sutton wanted to be trained on how to run the craft, and they persuaded Bob and his wife, along with Al and Kitty to help him “crew” the boat from Connecticut to Scandinavia, via Bermuda, the Azores and Copenhagen.
Taking a small boat across the Atlantic was tricky – people had to stand watch 24 hours a day and make sure nothing bad happened – avoiding bad weather, keeping on course, etc. But the two Old Salts — Bob and Al –– were more than up to the task.
After I graduated from college in 1969, Al and Kitty moved full time to a retirement community called Rossmoor, near Jamesburg NJ. Kitty hated being around older people exclusively, and she persuaded Al to move full time to their summer place in Normandy Beach, NJ. That was their last move. From the early 1970’s until he died in 1991 … and Kitty died in 1999 … they lived in Normandy.
Their lifestyle in Normandy was pretty much what it always was. Al had a workshop in the garage where he made and repaired things … and he developed a killer garden, even in the acidic, sandy soil of a beach town. Mom had the beach and her bridge friends. And they had each other.
In the last 10 or 15 years of his life Al became an excellent cook, taking over from Kitty, who didn’t really like to cook. Al would experiment with items from his garden, seafood he caught in Barnegat Bay and all sorts of spices and creams … mostly rich and salty concoctions as I recall.
He loved to “can” excess tomatoes, beans or other vegetables from the garden and eat them during the winter. He generally liked to “live off the fat of the land.”
Kitty and Al – Normandy Beach — 1980s
Kitty and Al – 40th Wedding Anniversary 1979
The 1980s were good times for the elder Willises. They got to see Heather grow up and graduate. They were healthy and happy with their lives. They didn’t travel very much, having limited funds.
Speaking of money, they were very frugal. Despite having a credo of “it only costs a little more to go first class,” Al would most often buy the bargain brands – or buy nothing at all.
Like many people who came of age in the Depression both Al and Kitty were averse to taking on debt and preferred to be savers rather than spenders.
I was very surprised to learn, during his lifetime, that Al never made more than $20,000 a year. With that income he was able to support a wife who didn’t work, two kids who got excellent educations (although he stopped supporting Diane after she got married), annual summer vacations at the beach, and a lovely home in a toney suburb when we were going to junior high and high schools.
As a family we seldom wasted money. But when something was important – e.g., my being able to attend a Boy Scout trip out West or buying Mom a new car, we always had the money.
This picture was taken about a year before his death when Al was still strong and vital. I find it surprising, now, to realize that virtually every picture I took of him has my mother in it. I’m not sure if this fact was my doing … or his preference. He certainly doted on her. And I was definitely a Momma’s boy.
Al turned 80 in July, 1991 and died the following December of cancer and renal failure. He was relatively strong and healthy up to the end, and he was embarrassed by his decline and death, being the proud pater familias who needed no help from anyone during his life.
Enough of the chronology: What sort of man was he?
He was an engineer and basically a scientific person, focused on finding out “how” and “what” more than “why.” He was very good at mechanical things and could fix almost anything. He was good at applied math — at a very practical level. He applied his knowledge of chemistry and biology to his gardening and his cooking.
He preferred talking about things and events, not people and ideas.
He was a physically powerful man – 6’2”, 200 pounds. You didn’t want to “tangle” with him, as he put it, but I never saw him be physically abusive to anyone. He did spank us kids … again, that was the norm for that time, but he always meted out “lashes” with the belt based on some sense of a fair sentence. I don’t recall him ever spanking me when he was angry. He never said “this hurts me more than it hurts you,” either. He was an executioner dispensing justice in the service of discipline and consequences, not an angry father or hand-wringing guilt-tripper.
Neighborhood kids were wary of him. There was just something about his piercing blue eyes that communicated, “Don’t mess with me.” They got it. He had “command presence” you could feel.
He was politically very conservative and had a bit of curmudgeon in him, especially later in life. Like many Caucasians born of WASP privilege in 1911, and especially those raised in the South, he held racist views. Like many conservatives, he felt he was personally magnanimous toward “colored folk” but he definitely viewed them as a subordinate race. There’s no doubt that, if he were alive, he would object to Diane’s dating a “negro.”
He exhibited an interesting blend of propriety and crassness. He could be very polished when he had to be, but he didn’t really like having to be something he really wasn’t. Diane inherited his sharp tongue and ability to shock with a pungent phrase. When you see her say something deliberatively provocative and/or a bit, um, earthy, she’s channeling Al. When I hear her do that, it’s as if he were speaking!
Al was surprisingly far-sighted, in both senses of the term. Visually, he could see exceptionally well … which was a requirement for those early NavCads selected for flight training. But as early as the 1980s he also predicted the challenges of global warming, talking to me about rising carbon dioxide levels and the impact on the weather and the oceans.
I also remember him predicting that the Soviet Union would get its ass kicked in Afghanistan after they invaded in 1979. Ten years later, it happened.
He was a Reagan Republican, quite contemptuous of “welfare queens” and other people “on the government tit.” I never pointed out that his entire career and his retirement, which lasted longer, was on that same government teat … and for those of us in the private sector who had to make our own way, life in the Navy seemed pretty socialistic, what with subsidized grocery stores, free communal recreation (pools, hobby shops, bowling alleys) and paid-for or subsidized housing. I didn’t say anything about him living off the government because he would have kicked my ass … metaphorically speaking, of course.
He was a good man. He was incredibly consistent and non-hypocritical. He had high integrity. He had – I’ll use a good old fashioned word here — “character” that you could rely on. When he was your friend – something not promiscuously given – he had your back, totally. And he was incredibly capable and resourceful, E.g., once, during a snowstorm, he welded a part that broke off my snowblower when I had to fulfill some contracts. (I had a small business at age 14 clearing snow for our neighbors; I had bought a snow thrower to make it easy to do lots of driveways and make money. In the middle of a blizzard, I hit a curb and broke a part. He fixed it so I could fulfill my obligations.)
What does this mean to you or for you? The parts of him that would be worthwhile as a model would be this integrity, this character, the loyalty and self-reliance. His strength and tenacity. His love of a woman and eventually, a family. The respect for and appreciation of nature. It’s a good set of values to embrace.